This week, the state’s sharpest tool against missionaries was the visa, not religion law. Nepal fined, deported and banned 24 South Koreans found at a Bible college for activities outside their tourist visas. In Khabarovsk, a Korean missionary got 5 years 8 months for “organising illegal migration”, and a Krishna festival in Russia drew 535,000 roubles in fines. In West Bengal, Christian families allege a forced ghar wapsi, with “purification” by water and worship at a Durga Puja pandal. In Tanzania, an Orthodox metropolitan publicly baptised 270 former Muslims, while converts were sentenced in Iran and tried in Egypt. In Rome, the “Church of the Sheaves” spoke of “honest memory” of mission’s colonial past.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 10–16 October 2026
Who pays the price of conversion – the missionary or the convert? This week, India’s Supreme Court ruled that a backward-class Hindu who becomes Muslim leaves his reservation status behind, while Iran keeps the Bible from converts but not from born Christians. In Russia, Muslims praying at home are fined for “illegal missionary activity”, and in Jharkhand a tribal body warns churches against celebrating local festivals – adopting a culture counts as an offence. Meanwhile, mission is growing: Africa now has more Catholics than Europe, Southern Baptists raised a record $212.5 million, and Adventists voted $99 million for one campaign. A global survey of conflicts over proselytism, drawing on sources in more than ten languages.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 26 September – 2 October 2026
In Chhattisgarh, more than a thousand non-Christians filed declarations stating that they attend church of their own free will. Hindu groups took the filings to the district authorities, and churches in Dhamtari now post notices warning non-Christians that they enter at their own risk. Documents meant to prove voluntariness have become evidence of exposure. This week’s briefing also covers a Rajasthan court’s first reading of the State’s 2025 conversion law, Russian fines and donation prosecutions, an Indonesian church opposed purely as a permit dispute, the Muslim World League courting Brussels, Wycliffe’s record translation year, and Southern Baptist and Adventist agencies drawing a line around what AI may do in mission.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 12–25 September 2026
Two weeks of conflicts over proselytism, from Central Asia to Nigeria. In Kazakhstan, nine alleged Tablighi Jamaat members are tried on hidden-camera evidence; in Uzbekistan, a Shia faces prison for laments posted on Telegram; Pakistan’s top court upholds the ban on the Ahmadiyya founder’s writings. The Muslim World League plans to supply Islamic sources to AI companies, Yad L’Achim reissues an outreach booklet in Russian and Arabic, and Nigeria’s bishops warn of “neo-paganism”. Our analysis follows enforcement from the book to the channel to the private conversation, and asks why a return to ancestral religion is “homecoming” in one place and regression in another.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 29 August – 4 September 2026
A taxi driver fined in Moscow for “missionary activity” after praying alone on the tarmac. A Maine supreme court giving a father authority over whether his daughter may attend an evangelical church. Hindutva activists staging a sit-in in a Hyderabad software company’s car park over an alleged conversion attempt — where the only police complaint on file is the company’s, against the protesters. The week’s material shares a structure: the offence is constituted not by a convert but by a witness. Meanwhile Southern Baptist missionaries carried virtual-reality relationships onto Tokyo streets at the invitation of the convention’s own organisers, and Indonesian scholars asked what the sponsorship market is doing to the preacher.